


you'd best just walk on by

by cassandralied



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Pre-Canon, Web-Typical Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23984701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassandralied/pseuds/cassandralied
Summary: she should care, really, whether meeting sasha james had been part of her predetermined destiny.(she doesn't)
Relationships: Sasha James/Annabelle Cane
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	you'd best just walk on by

**Author's Note:**

> a gift for a friend

Annabelle could say that it was an accident for her to happen to stop in for a coffee at the same place where the future archivist is about to walk in. But is there such a thing as accidents, really? Or is it the force that’s been pulling her since she was a child that brought her to this city, to this college. To this woman.  
So when pretty, wild-haired Sasha James takes a seat in one of the corner booths and rests her head on her laptop, looking like she wants to go to sleep right there, Annabelle sees an opportunity.   
“A triple espresso and a croissant, please,” she asks. One day she won’t have to ask. One day, she can just blink and she’ll be given everything she wants for free, this Annabelle knows. It’s her destiny. But until then, she smiles blandly at the bored-looking cashier and hands over her money. “Name?”  
“Sasha James.”

She brings the order over to the real Sasha as soon as it’s ready. “Hey,” Annabelle says in her gentlest voice, and then again. “Hey.”  
Sasha starts awake, all wild eyes, but not from fear. Her hair is an absolute mess, and there’s a blue ink stain on the sleeve of her faded sweater that Annabelle can’t look away from.

“You looked like you could use this,” Annabelle pushes the drink over to her. Sasha looks at her warily. “Um. Thanks?”

“I promise you, I’m purely motivated by sympathy,” and that was the right thing to say, because Sasha looks like she’s warming up to her. “I’ve done more than a few late nighters myself.”  
Sasha takes a sip of the coffee, and her eyes clear just a bit. “Oh, are you a student here?”  
“Yeah. Psychology.” At least that isn’t a lie. “You?”

Sasha’s trying to subtly smooth back her hair with her hands, tame her appearance a little. It’s kind of adorable. “Library science. And please don’t tell me I’m too sexy to be a librarian or something stupid like that.”  
Annabelle snorts and steals a bite of the croissant. “The thought never crossed my mind.” Actually, she thinks Sasha is just the right amount of sexy to be a librarian, but she doesn’t say that. She hates being predictable.  
She leaves the cafe later than usual, but it’s with Sasha’s number.

“What do you want from her?” she asks the Mother that night. She can’t understand it, she can’t even get close until her transformation. She’s never dared ask a question before. She feels a light pressure at the base of her spine, gentle at first, and then harsh. A threat.

“I’m sorry, Mother,” Annabelle says immediately, curling up into the fetal position underneath her covers. “I just…I like her.” She expects the pain to worsen at that, but instead it disappears, and there’s a sensation not unlike the brush of a kiss on her cheek. Good, the Mother seems to be saying, and Annabelle wishes she understood why. She has dreams of spiders sometimes, giant spiders drawing little human flies into their webs, and she doesn’t want that to happen to Sasha.

She feels motion, as if someone’s stroking through her hair straight to her brain, and it’s oddly comforting. (Annabelle’s parents had never comforted her much as a child, and projecting one’s desires for mothering onto another authority figure, well, that’s just Freud 101.)  
She may like Sasha, but the Mother _loves_ Annabelle, wholly and entirely, with a force that Annabelle won’t even fully understand until her transformation.

Usually, it doesn’t bother Annabelle, the not knowing whether something is her whim or the Mother’s. But when she texts Sasha the next day, _study sesh?_ well. It bothers her.  
Sasha texts back about half an hour later with her address, and Annabelle laces up her best stiletto boots, tightens her vintage corset, and tries to wipe the feeling off her face.

They don’t hook up in Sasha’s dorm that day. They just talk, and study, and if Annabelle notices Sasha’s eyes flicking down to her lips, she doesn’t say anything about it. Sasha’s actually pretty funny. Annabelle’s almost forgotten what her real laugh sounds like, and it’s startling to hear it again, prompted out by this five-foot-nothing future librarian. “We should do this again,” Sasha says with a bright smile, and Annabelle closes her glasses case with a coffin-like thud and smiles back.

“I’m not going to be able to see her after my transformation, am I?” Annabelle says to her bedroom ceiling, her limbs sweat-slippery after another nightmare. The Mother doesn’t reply, and Annabelle knows what that means.

When Dr. Bates explains the project, and says she needs volunteers, Annabelle doesn’t hesitate before writing her name down in looping cursive.

It turns out it was all for nothing, actually. Sasha James isn't chosen as the new archivist, and Annabelle doesn't have any need to visit her. She doesn't have a lot of time to think about what happened to the messy-haired not-archivist. The spiders on the inside of her brain are so very loud, and they keep her so _busy._

(She doesn't think it's anything good, though. The Mother doesn't like dual loyalties, Annabelle knows that in her bones, and sometimes people have to die for Her to get that point across.)


End file.
